Until now, transactional memory has been a technique best described as “experimental.” The theoretical gains—a simpler programming model that allows much greater concurrency than lock-based systems—are well-known, but practical (software-based) implementations have offset those gains due to their poor performance. Even IBM’s implementation is designed with an eye on experimentation to see if transactional memory is useful in practice. But with Intel planning to include the feature in a mainstream, mass-market processor, that changes: transactional memory will start being used for real. For parallel programmers, that’s an exciting prospect indeed.

The first model of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s low-cost Linux computer will likely be available for purchase later this month.

In recent years, improvements in that area have come fast enough that CERN no longer bothers with hardware support contracts longer than three years. Machines just get run until they're dead; the cost of the replacement, and the power savings replacement hardware brings, means it doesn't make economic sense to keep the hardware going.